Section: Application Domains

Social Sciences

We collaborate with social science researchers from EHESS Paris on the visualization of dynamic networks; they use our systems (GeneaQuilts [56], Vistorian [64], PAOHVis [7]) and teach them to students and researchers. Our tools are used daily by ethnographers and historians to study the evolution of social relations over time. In the social sciences, many datasets are gathered by individual researchers to answer a specific question, and automated analytical methods cannot be applied to these small datasets. Furthermore, the studies are often focused on specific persons or organizations and not always on the modeling or prediction of the behavior of large populations. The tools we design to visualize complex multivariate dynamic networks are unique and suited to typical research questions shared by a large number of researchers. This line of research is supported by the DataIA “HistorIA” project, and by the “IVAN” European project. We also collaborate on the BART initiative, a joint project with IRT-SystemX on the analysis and visualization of blockchain data, in collaboration with economists from Université Paris-Sud.